


Transported: The Healer

by cable69



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-06
Updated: 2016-01-06
Packaged: 2018-05-12 02:16:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5649946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cable69/pseuds/cable69
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What in the name of the Goddess are you pointing at me?” a rather petulant voice demanded. “Put it down—whatever it is.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Transported: The Healer

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted on ff.net; unedited

“This is routine?” said Bones.

“Completely routine,” promised Kirk, strapping a phaser to his hip. “Scotty, that smoke’s routine, right?”

“Completely routine, sir,” coughed Scotty. “Don’t worry yer little heads about it. ‘Tis nae to be bothered with.”

Bones glanced over at Spock, who waited patiently on the transporter pad, hands behind his back. Spock’s attitude reassured Bones: if Spock did not give the situation The Eyebrow, Bones figured that the smoke billowing out of the transporter console was merely, as everyone had said, routine. He sighed, exchanging glances with Uhura, who shrugged back at him. 

“Energize,” said Kirk.

Bones appeared alone in the middle of a forest, which was a problem, because the planet he was supposed to be beaming down to was entirely desert. He tried to step forwards and immediately tripped over a root, scraping his hands badly on rough branches as he fell.

Ground level, he raised his eyes to the heavens and swore he was going to kill Scotty, Kirk, and Spock (Spock really just for the hell of it; the pointy-eared bastard deserved the fate in general) when he got back to the Enterprise. Huffing angrily, he stalked over to a fallen tree, sat on it, and flipped open his communicator.

“McCoy to Enterprise,” he growled.

There was nothing but static.

He stared at the device and tried again.

“Uh… McCoy to Enterprise?”

Yup. Just the low buzz. It didn’t even sound like his message was going through. He fiddled with the dials, trying to ignore the panic beginning to gnaw at his stomach, and tried a few more times before giving up and looking around him.

So. A forest.

Bones got up and wandered around. He did not have a standard-issue tricorder with him, just his medical tricorder, so couldn’t guess a thing about the nonorganic elements of whatever place he was in, but he could sure as hell tell you anything you would like to know about life forms he encountered. He took a few readings of the trees and as surprised to find that they were standard cedar and bay. He frowned up their brown trunks and caught sight of a cross-eyed squirrel nibbling on a piece of freshly-peeled carrot.

That piece of carrot had to come from somewhere.

He turned around to try another reading when he heard a twig crack behind him. He drew his phaser and leveled it at the noise, which had originated from a shadow peeking out from behind a nearby bush.

“Who’s there?” Bones called as the shadow paused.

“What in the name of the Goddess are you pointing at me?” a rather petulant voice demanded. “Put it down—whatever it is.”

Bones blinked. He’d understood what the form had said, thanks to his universal translator, but the accent had sounded strange—slightly arrogant, and quite cultured.

“I will not lower my weapon,” said Bones strongly. “Who are you? Where is this?”

“Where—you don’t know where you are? And what are you wearing?”

“My uniform,” growled Bones, willing his hand not to shake. “My name’s Leonard McCoy of the USS Enterprise, and if you fire on me, my captain’ll bring the wrath of Starfleet down on you.”

“Star fleet? Have you escaped from Gainel’s temple? They keep lunatics there.” The voice became slightly amused.

“I’m not a lunatic! I’m stranded!” Bones’s voice was quite strained by now. “Do you or do you not know where I am?”

“You’re in the Royal Forest near Corus. Who are you?”

“I told you, my name’s Leonard McCoy,” Bones growled, shifting to try and get a better view of whoever it was. “I’m the Chief Medical Officer on board the USS Enterprise. Who’re you?”

“Squire Nealan of Queenscove. Neal.” The figure finally emerged from under the shadow. It was a human man, was a bit taller than Bones, and young—nineteen or twenty, maybe—with swept-back brown hair and bright green eyes. He was extremely fit and was wearing a gold and red tunic and was holding—a sword.

Bones goggled at the blade. “Why have you got a sword?” he said dumbly.

“Why have you got a stick of metal?” Squire Nealan of Queenscove retorted. “At least I have a weapon.”

Wordlessly, Bones turned the phaser towards a tree, switched it to kill, and fired. The tree disintegrated.

Neal’s eyes widened. “So you’re armed,” he said slowly.

They stared at each other for a while.

“Listen,” said Bones finally, lowering his phaser. “As long as you don’t kill me or torture me, you can do anythin’ you want with me. I’m not s’posed to be here and I’d love to spend my time on this planet in a relaxed state, not in a shootout.”

“So you’re not going to… use… that thing,” Neal clarified.

“Yes. I’m not going to fire it,” said Bones. “Hell, I’ll even give it to you.” He threw it to the boy, who nearly dropped it in his surprise.

“Now really, who are you?” said Neal, lowering his sword and motioning for Bones to sit against a tree. Neal plopped onto the ground nearby, pulled a hunk of cheese out of his belt-pouch, broke it in half, and tossed one half to Bones, who caught it, sniffed it, and, deciding it looked clean, took a bite. It was quite good.

“Leonard McCoy,” said Bones for the third time, licking his lips. “I’m a doctor.”

“A what?”

Bones frowned. “A doctor. I—heal people.”

The boy raised an eyebrow at him. Bones stared; the expression was oddly similar to Spock’s.

“So you’re a healer,” said Neal dryly, and Bones thought that in addition to acting like a certain Vulcan, Neal was also rather like himself. “You can’t just say you’re a healer?”

“Where I’m from, we’re called ‘doctors,’” Bones insisted. “I’m sure you wouldn’t know a thing about it.”

Neal laughed. He moved over next to Bones, grabbing Bones’s scraped hand. Bones tried to pull away, but Neal’s grip was incredibly strong, as if he’d done nothing but train with weights for the last four years. “Hold still,” said Neal, frowning, keeping Bones’s wrist in an iron clamp. With his free hand, he touched Bones’s scratches lightly. A warm, green glow appeared between his and Bones’s hand. Bones felt the scratches go hot, then cold, then—nothing. Neal let go, the light fading. Bones jerked his hand away and stared at it. The scratches were gone.

“I know a little about healing,” said Neal, a self-satisfied smirk on his face. Bones resisted the urge to elbow the youth in the stomach.

“How’d you do that?” Bones demanded, peering at his flawless skin.

“I have the Gift,” said Neal, as if this were obvious. “If you’re a healer, you must have it too.”

“Of course I don’t. I’ve just got tricorders and dermal regenerators and—listen, the Gift, you say?”

“Yes—magic.”

Bones simply gaped at him. “Magic?”

Neal gazed upon him as if he were a retarded puppy. “Yes, Sir Leonard,” he said calmly. “Magic.”

Neal’s self-satisfied expression was much more than Bones could bear. “Okay,” said Bones. “Remember my weapon? The metal thing?” Neal nodded, touching the one of the larger lumps in his belt-purse. “That’s called a phaser. It uses electricity.”

Neal looked aghast. “As in lightning?” he said. “Nobody can control that, nobody but extremely talented weather-mages.”

“And me,” said Bones. “Although I’m not a… weather mage. Actually, I’m from space.” He pointed upwards. Neal blinked at him.

“You mean,” said Neal slowly, “the stars?”

“Yup.”

“Then—you are a god? Because you don’t seem like a god. According to Rakuri shur Harrakin, in his Annals of the Immortal Realm, the power of lightning—”

“I’m a human,” Bones interrupted. “I live on a spaceship, with other people. We travel from planet to planet. We don’t have magic.”

“This can’t be true.” Neal’s eyes were as large as portholes.

“Well, you can’t have magic!” Bones protested. “It’s impossible, what you just did—my skin is completely healed and you’re not hidin’ a dermal regenerator inside your dermis, so I can only assume that you do have the—the Gift, as you say. And my phaser, well. What—”

“Neal! Where in Mithros’s name have you gotten to?”

Bones jumped as a short, stocky redheaded woman in a brown tunic and leather armor came crashing through the undergrowth. While there was a certain delicacy about her face, she still looked like a ton of bricks wielding a sword and shield. She stopped midway into the clearing and stared at Bones.

“Who is this?” she demanded of Neal. “What is he wearing?”

Neal had jumped to his feet as soon as the woman had shouted. He bowed slightly to her. “Sir Alanna, this is Sir Leonard McCoy. He’s a healer. He’s, uh, from space.”

“He’s what?”

Bones sighed. This was going to be a long day.

x

The alarming redhead dragged Bones and Neal through what seemed like thirty miles of wilderness until they reached a little clearing where three horses and two tents were parked. Bones, a very fit man, was nevertheless absolutely out of breath by the time the clearing was in sight; he dropped onto another conveniently fallen tree to recover while the redhead stalked around, muttering to herself and searching through various packs for something. Neal, not tired at all, took a seat across from Bones, crossed his hands under his chin, and stared at him.

“Quit that,” growled Bones, glaring at Neal, who didn’t even blink.

“I’m just wondering what it must be like,” said Neal grandly. “To swim amongst the stars and commune with the beings of other worlds! Are all of your people star-farers?”

“Not really,” said Bones, amused by Neal’s grandiose rhetoric. “I’m a member of Starfleet—it’s a peacekeeping, scientific, and exploratory organization. My species comes from one planet, but we’re spread throughout the galaxy.”

“Amazing,” said Neal, eyes wide. “The questions I have to ask! You say your star fleet is a peacekeeping organization? And how did you get here in the first place? How many other worlds have you visited? How many other intelligent species have you met?”

“Neal,” snapped Alanna. “Quit the theatrics. Give the man time to breathe. He’s probably loose from Gainel’s temple, you know. You don’t want to exhaust his poor mind.”

“Excuse me, ma’am,” said Bones indignantly. “I’m not a lunatic. I just happened to get a little lost.”

“He has a tree-destroyer,” said Neal, pulling Bones’s phaser out of his belt pouch. “Do you want to see it?”

Alanna eyed the phaser skeptically. “That thing can destroy trees?”

“And people,” said Bones. “It’s on kill right now—there are two settings, kill and stun. There’s a trigger—don’t press it! Dammit, boy, you coulda vaporized that poor horse.”

“If you hurt Graymoon, I’ll hurt you,” said Alanna, coming over and snatching the phaser out of Neal’s hand. She held it gingerly by the barrel. Bones would have laughed if the situation weren’t so worrisome. 

“Whatever you do, don’t press the trigger,” said Bones. He showed Alanna how the phaser worked, thinking ruefully that this was probably a gigantic breach of the Prime Directive, but figuring that these people probably couldn’t profit from technology this advanced. From what he had seen of Neal and Alanna, they came from a primitive civilization. They rode horses and carried swords; they were undoubtedly the protectors of a little village somewhere nearby and were shocked to see or hear of any sort of advanced technology. Once the power of the phaser had been demonstrated to Alanna, she started taking Bones a bit more seriously. Bones tried to explain what had happened, but gave up, although Neal and Alanna kept asking questions.

“The only solution is for you to stay with us until your boat… star… army comes back for you,” said Alanna firmly, after some time. “We’ll head back to Corus and have Numair take a look at you. Meanwhile, you can camp with us. Can you hunt or fish?”

Though born and raised in rural Mississippi, Bones had never fired a gun in his life, much less shot a bow and arrow. But fishing he could do. Alanna went off with a crossbow to destroy small woodland creatures and Neal escorted Bones to a nearby river. They waded in.

“How many of you are in your progress?” Neal asked interestedly. He wasn’t helping Bones fish at all, just leaning against a boulder half-submerged in the stream and re-crossing his feet occasionally, which scared the trout.

“There are over four hundred of us on my spaceship,” said Bones, peering into the clear stream and wondering what these goddamn fish had against perfectly good worms. In Colorado he could have caught fifty of the damned things already, but these trout weren’t even nibbling. 

“A goodly number,” said Neal. “When our king goes on Progress, he takes about that number in his retinue. By what manner is your—ship—propelled, and how large is it?”

Bones didn’t think he could explain warp and impulse engines to a twelfth-century knight-errant if someone were holding a bat’leth to his throat. He made a face and said that propulsion wasn’t his realm of expertise, then gave the dimensions of the Enterprise in metric, which meant nothing to Neal. Nevertheless, Neal kept asking questions, and if he weren’t scaring away the fish with his damned noise, Bones thought he could get to like the kid—most of the questions were pretty intelligent.

After a half hour, Neal unearthed a fishing line of his own and promptly caught three fat trout to Bones’s one. They hiked back to the camp, Neal ribbing Bones about being an inept fisherman while Bones spluttered in protest. Alanna was waiting for them when they got back, cooking a stringy rabbit and some vegetables over the fire. 

From the conversation over dinner, Bones gathered that Alanna was training Neal to be a knight like herself, and that her situation was unique: she was the only female knight in the “realm” (whatever geographical area that constituted; Bones had no doubt it was a few miles of countryside, perhaps bounded by a small stream or a hill). This struck Bones as rather sexist. Neal was quick to add that Alanna wouldn’t be alone for long; evidently another woman was about to become a knight as well, some friend of his who was off with some friend of Alanna’s near some other realm with a sharp-sounding name. It was all a bit beyond Bones, who was very full and very tired and strangely unworried about the situation. Neal barely got a bedroll made for him before Bones was sprawled across it and snoring.

“I think he’s telling the truth,” Neal said to Alanna, staring down at Bones’s twitching form.

“I think so too,” said Alanna, fingering the ember-stone she wore at her neck. “I’ll ask the Great Mother about him. Perhaps she can help return him to where he belongs.”

x

The next morning, Neal took down the tent around Bones without waking him up. What eventually woke Bones up was a horse tongue licking his jaw.

“Agh!” Bones sat up, scrambling backwards and wiping his mouth hurriedly. Graymoon nosed his blankets as Neal’s horse Brightstar and the packhorse Loy munched grass at a distressingly close range. For a moment, all Bones could see were horse hooves. He was petrified.

“Looks like the lunatic’s awake,” Alanna called across the campground. “Good. We need to get going, Sir McCoy. I’ve just received a message from the king. His daughter is sick, and he needs my help in Corus.”

Neal took pity on Bones and rescued him from the horses, then promptly had to teach him how to ride one. Bones kept getting distracted, and understandably so: he was slightly preoccupied in watching Alanna pack the camp by magic.

Alanna walked quickly around the camp, dissembling and folding the tents and covering the fire by hand, but around her, a haze of purple with sharper points came down to restore the grass and dirt to its natural state. The haze encouraged the vegetation that the horses had cropped to grow, covered the scent of the latrine, erased footsteps and other imprints, and generally made the camp look as if it had never actually been a camp. Neal snapped his fingers in front of Bones’s wide eyes as Alanna sent a full pack over to Loy, who Neal would be riding. 

“We are in a hurry,” Neal said firmly. “That’s why Sir Alanna is using so much magic. So you need to listen to me, or we’ll leave you behind!”

Bones dragged his eyes away from the haze and focused on what Neal was saying. He had taken riding lessons as a child, but after a traumatizing incident with a low tree branch, he had been disinclined to approach equestrianism once more. However, descriptions of desperate times and their accompanying measures were being invoked. By the time Alanna was ready to leave, Bones thought he was probably capable of a canter.

They traveled all day, stopping only once for a fast lunch. The forest seemed impassable at first; the trees were thick and cloying, and the abundance of wildlife gave the place a living, menacing feel. But small game tracks became visible as they rode, and they never had to cut their way through the thick undergrowth. As the day wore on, the trees thinned and the sky widened. Bones was sore everywhere by early evening, when the sun was small and yellowing in the sky and the foliage, in a final reflection of the dying light, seemed particularly green and vivacious.

They came over a hill and Bones saw the place they had been traveling towards all day: Corus.

He fell off his horse.

Alanna halted the train and leapt down to help Bones, who had caught his leg in the stirrup and was being dragged about by an agitated Brightstar. Neal was too busy laughing to help at all. Alanna hauled Bones’s ankle out of the leather strap and pulled him up, a grin on her sharp face. Bones spluttered at the view.

“That’s a city!” he exclaimed, pointing at Corus, which sprawled hugely before them, occupying the entirety of the valley in which it rested. It had to hold a hundred thousand people, and it moved like a living thing as the distant markets and streets beat with people like blood in its paved veins.

“Yes,” said Neal, recovering enough to make like he were speaking to small child. “A city is what we call a place with a lot of people in it. Corus, my good man, is the capital of the realm.”

Bones decided to take this whole “realm” concept much more seriously.

“That was my reaction when I first saw Corus,” said Alanna, taking a moment to stare across the bustling metropolis. “I’ll leave you here. Neal, escort our visitor to the palace at pace. I’ll go ahead and see what I can do for Kalasin.”

“Yes, Sir Alanna,” said Neal, bowing from the waist.

Alanna galloped off.

It took Bones and Neal nearly an hour to reach the palace at a canter. Bones kept exclaiming at the littlest uses of magic, and gasped whenever really interesting-looking people appeared, like armored priestesses-warriors of the Goddess, richly-dressed Carthakis, or barbarous, blond Scanrans. Neal had to drag him away from any number of taverns, and then gave a requested lecture about the history of alcohol in Tortall (the name of the realm of which Neal and Alanna had spoken). Bones was kept thus entertained until they reached the sprawling palace complex.

“So where are we goin’?” said Bones as Neal led him up from the stables through a veritable labyrinth of hallways. 

“The royal chambers,” said Neal. “The princess is sick. That is why Alanna was called back.”

“Alanna’s a doctor? A healer?”

Neal grinned at the slip. “Yes, a very talented one. That’s why she’s training me. My father is the chief of palace healers. I inherited his Gift.” Something seemed to occur to Neal. “Are any of your relatives healers?”

“Nope,” said Bones. “I’m the lone wolf in my family. They’re all engineers and chemists except for me, and I’m the only one in Starfleet, too.”

“What is an engineer and a chemist? Your family is not noble, then?”

Bones laughed. “We don’t have nobility where I’m from. We’re all equals, all commoners and kings.”

Neal was taken aback. “Then how does governing work? Who decides?”

“We vote,” said Bones, “and the established government does what we say. Ideally. I take it you have a monarch? And we’re about to see him?”

“Yes, King Jonathan the Fourth, of Conté. He’s actually very nice.”

“Wonderful,” Bones muttered. “I get to meet your king. This should be interestin’.”

A footman saw them to a little antechamber, where they sat for a while. Bones and Neal were enthusiastically debating the merits and demerits of the Federation’s socialist representative democracy when Alanna emerged from the doorway, followed shortly by a tall man with short black hair, an even taller man with long black hair, and the most beautiful woman Bones had ever seen in his entire life.

Bones levitated to his feet, staring at the woman, whose dark hair fell around her stunning face in loose, curling waves. She smiled at him and he knew his heart was pounding loud enough for everyone to hear.

Alanna introduced them. “Jon, Thayet, Numair, this is Sir Leonard McCoy. Sir McCoy, King Jonathan of Tortall, his wife Queen Thayet, and the mage Numair Salmalín.”

“Pleased to meet you,” murmured Bones, kissing Thayet’s hand gently. “I am beyond words.”

“Thank you, Sir McCoy,” laughed Thayet.

“I am interested in meeting a traveler from another world,” said the shorter black-haired man, moving forward smoothly. There was something familiar in his eyes. “I am Jon. I heard that you came to our realm in an accident.”

“You can call me Bones. Yes, it was an accident, but—wait, aren’t you the king?”

“Yes,” said Jon mildly.

“I think I just hit on your wife,” said Bones slowly. “You’re not gonna behead me or anythin’?”

“He only does that to the egregiously lecherous cases,” said Thayet, grinning in evident remembrance.

“How’s your daughter?” said Bones anxiously, remembering why they were there. “Is she okay? I’m a healer too, actually, if you need any help.”

“Thank you, but Kalasin is much improved, thanks to Sir Alanna,” said Thayet. “Shall we?” She motioned to another series of rooms.

Bones followed them in, the taller black-haired man at his side. Bones realized that this man was watching him.

“You’re… Numair, right?” said Bones.

“Precisely,” said Numair, peering closely at Bones. It was a bit unnerving: there was something off about the man, as if whoever had placed him in this reality had not done it quite right. “Where do you say you are from, if I may ask?”

There were any number of ways to answer this question. “It’s not exactly where I’m from, but I’m supposed to be on the planet Trio, taking a look at a physical anomaly common to their indigenous population.”

“Indeed,” said Numair, stroking his beard thoughtfully. “And how did you end up here?”

“I have absolutely no idea,” said Bones frankly. “See, I was on a space ship before this. To get to the surfaces of planets, we do this thing called beamin’—they take us apart, send us through the air, and put us back together where we’re s’posed to be. But somethin’ evidently went wrong with the beamin’.”

“This sounds like fascinating magic,” said Numair. Bones noted with some alarm that the man had yet to blink. “Could you explain it to me?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know how it works,” said Bones. “I’m a healer, not an engineer.” He quickly explained, “Engineers are the people who do the beamin’.”

“Ah,” said Numair. By this time, the party had settled at a long table. Everyone was listening to Bones and Numair. “Now, what other talents do engineers have?”

The explanations went on for some time. Jon, Thayet, and Alanna all had questions to augment Numair’s. Bones started feeling sleepy again, and was very grateful when there was a polite rap at the door and Neal ducked in.

“Excuse me, your Majesties, sirs, mage,” he said, the very picture of deference and servility. “I believe that your guest has had a long day, and requires nourishment.”

“Yes, of course, how rude of us,” said Jon, standing immediately. “Have Iraz bring us some dinner.”

“It has been ordered, your Majesty,” said Neal, bowing his head. “Shall we serve you in this chamber?”

“If you don’t mind,” Bones broke in, “I’d like to go to bed. I can do without dinner.”

“Of course,” said Jon graciously. “Squire Nealan, if you would escort Sir McCoy to his rooms?”

“Thanks for rescuing me,” Bones said to Neal as they walked down yet another set of corridors. “I didn’t really want to eat with them; I figured they wouldn’t let me swallow a bite for questions.”

“I thought as much. Your dinner is being sent to your room.” Neal showed Bones into a largish apartment, furnished with surprising luxury. There were thick, woven carpets, a well-stuffed bed, and a sophisticated chamber-pot. A nightshirt had even been laid out. Bones changed into it after eating his dinner. Neal, hidden behind a screen, continued to talk to him.

“A number of people are interested in meeting you. Word of your… arrival… has spread throughout the city. Would you like to see more of it, tomorrow?”

“It’d be a pleasure,” said Bones, wishing there were a mirror around so that he could see himself. The nightshirt was a bit frilly. He stepped from behind the screen, ready to flinch at a comment from Neal.

“I’ll have your garments washed,” said Neal, who had pushed Bones’s uniform delicately into a basket. “Sleep well.”

“Wait, Neal,” said Bones, moving forward. He put a big hand on Neal’s forearm and smiled at the boy. “Thanks.”

“It’s been my pleasure,” said Neal with a kind smile. “I’ll wake you tomorrow at dawn.”

Bones got into bed and snuggled down. He wasn’t used to non-synthetic padding like this, and found he liked it. He sniffed the mattress. It smelled like real down. Bones tugged the corners of his blanket over his shoulders and as he drifted off, he thought sleepily that Neal hadn’t made fun of him during the past hour. How kind. 

x

“No horses this time!” said Neal cheerfully, throwing back the curtains and allowing the sun to spear Bones’s closed lids. “Up you go, Sir McCoy!”

“Ugh,” said Bones, rubbing his eyes and pushing back his covers. “You weren’t kiddin’ when you talked about dawn. Don’t you people sleep in?”

“There is only so much daylight,” said Neal, laying Bones’s clothes over a stand that looked made especially for the purpose. “We are breaking our fast in the Daymarket. Sir Alanna informed me that it would not be wise to take you to the lower city, but it has the best shop for morning pasties, and my lady was unable to deny that fact. She did inform me that if you came to any harm that she would strangle me with my own intestines, so—be careful today, please?”

Neal proceeded to drag Bones all over Corus. Bones, dressed hastily in foreign clothes that itched but seemed quite well-made and armed (rather shockingly) with a knife and a sword (which he kept tripping over), was altogether awestruck. Neal fed him a vast assortment of astonishingly good food, showed him nearly a hundred temples, shops, and landmarks, and best of all, introduced him to a bewildering number of incredibly interesting people.

“No more,” said Bones firmly, midway through the afternoon. “I can’t take it. Do y’all conduct a census? Because if you do, you oughta be in charge of the thing. Do you know everyone?”

“No, just… a majority of them,” said Neal, rather archly. “Fine. Should you like to give up, we shall return to the place.”

That tactic never worked on Bones. “Oh, I give up,” he admitted readily. “I surrender absolutely. I’ll just go back and die of exhaustion.”

So they went back. Right outside of the palace, Neal mentioned something about “baths” to Bones, who, having traversed lightyears of forest and fathoms of city in the past two days, was feeling distinctly grimy, and leapt on the idea. The baths, however, turned out to be filled with actual water, and also, other people.

“Oh no,” said Bones, taking quite a few steps backwards as Neal explained the public bath concept to him. “That is unsanitary in so many ways. Also, where I’m from, we bathe alone.”

“How strange,” said Neal distantly, not particularly interested in Bones’s excuses. “In you go.”

“Hey!”

There was a small scuffle, which Neal won effectively. (Bones, whimpering a bit, vowed to train up on his hand-to-hand.) “You are ripe,” said Neal, nostrils flaring as he maneuvered Bones into the changing area. “Come on. It won’t be bad.”

Bones, after extracting a promise from Neal not to look, peeled his clothes off and made a mad dash for the baths. Neal, laughing uproariously, followed Bones into the main room and got a lecture for clearly breaking his promise. The other men in the baths stared at them for a bit and then went back to talking. Bones hid in a steamy corner.

“This is awful,” he told Neal feelingly.

Neal just shoved some soap at him.

Bones got over his embarrassment and had a two-hour conversation with Neal concerning just about everything. Bones learned that Neal had six brothers and sisters and was going to inherit his father’s title and become the Duke of Queenscove, which Bones found quite impressive. They talked about Bones’s daughter Joanna and his life in Starfleet. Bones extracted blackmail information: Neal’s cousin called him “Meathead” and Neal’s friend Kel (the woman training to be a knight that Alanna and Neal had talked about on Bones’s first night) constantly held him hostage to the name. Bones noticed that Neal talked about Kel quite a lot, and for a while he toyed with the idea of pointing out to Neal that he should ask this Kel out sometime. But he gave it a half hour, and by the end of that time, he realized that Neal pretty firmly considered Kel as just a friend. Neal asked Bones about his love life, at which point Bones blushed horribly and protested that his love life was not at all important. Neal convinced him to say that, actually, he wasn’t interested in anybody, except maybe his captain, or possibly the first officer, or maybe the communications officer, or perhaps his head nurse. Neal had two amusing moments of confusion: “Your captain is female?” and then, “Your captain is not female?” before finally shrugging and saying, “There are men who like men in Tortall, as well.”

“I don’t just like men,” said Bones irritably. Neal didn’t really know what to do with that. They moved on.

Neal complained about Kel’s evil horse, the lack of romanticism his yearmates expressed, and the modern disregard for poetry. Bones sat through a couple of Neal’s love sonnets before telling Neal how really awful they were. Neal pouted at him for a bit and then asked Bones what his hobbies were.

“Not gettin’ killed’s a favorite of mine,” said Bones slowly. “And old medicine. And alcohol.”

Neal laughed. “I guessed about that last one,” he said knowingly.

Eventually they realized that everybody else had left the baths and clambered out, joking with each other.

It was nice, Bones thought, to have somebody to be comfortable with here. He smiled at Neal, and Neal smiled back.

x

Throughout both days, Bones had called periodically to the Enterprise on his communicator, and had received no answer. He was worried, but he had shoved most of that worry to the very back of his mind and tossed the sights and sounds of Corus on top of it. But that night, after another pleasant interrogation session with the king and his closest advisors, Bones panicked.

Neal, again, was in his room, having dinner with him, and was just feeling the need to calm him down when there was a quiet knock at Bones’s door.

“Come in,” said Bones shakily, putting down his fork.

Alanna entered the room. She was pale and there were dark circles under her eyes. Bones remembered that she had not been with him, Jon, Thayet, and Numair that evening. “Excuse me, Sir McCoy,” she said, sounding exhausted. “Neal, I need your help. Kalasin’s gotten worse.”

“Oh no,” said Neal, leaping out of his seat and scrambling around for his things. “Yes, of course, sir.”

“Would you—or would Jon—mind if I came along?” said Bones haltingly, standing as well. The fact was, he needed something to do so that he wouldn’t worry. 

Alanna was silent for a moment. “I don’t think—” she started to say.

“He should come,” said Neal unexpectedly. “He could help. Couldn’t you, Sir McCoy?” There was a spark of confidence in his eyes that warmed Bones.

“It depends,” said Bones, standing up and immediately feeling much better about things, now that he had something to do. “What are the girl’s symptoms?”

Alanna told Bones about Kalasin’s sickness as they walked down the corridor. Bones thought the ailment sounded like a simple bacterial infection. Kalasin’s chest was hurting her very, very badly; her shoulders and clavicles were reddish, painful, and swollen.

“Why can’t you get rid of the infection?” Bones asked Alanna. “I thought your magic could cure just about anythin’.”

“Kally’s condition is different from anything else I have encountered,” said Alanna shortly. “My fire does not burn it out, and my prayers to the Goddess have not been answered.” She looked hollow and sad. “Neal, I hate to ask you to help with this, but I have started to accidentally draw on my life force. The sickness is draining.”

“You probably can’t burn out a bacterial infection,” said Bones, sounding more confident than he was. “I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know a thing about your medicine, but they take long-term care to get rid of. If you have any penicillium fungi—”

They had reached Kalasin’s room. Alanna motioned for silence. Followed by Bones and Neal, she entered.

Thayet was seated next to a large, soft bed. The room was warm from the fire. Thayet looked as exhausted as Alanna.

“Your highness,” said Alanna softly. Thayet acknowledged Alanna with a little nod and scooted her chair back so that Alanna and Neal had room to approach Kalasin’s bed.

Kalasin was asleep. Bones was struck by how small she was for a sixteen year-old. She had her father’s raven-black hair and her mother’s cheekbones and jeweled lips. She was achingly beautiful, but her fine features were lank with sickness. Her nightshirt was drawn back to display her shoulders, which were mottled red, the color starting at her upper arms and spreading across her collarbones and halfway up her neck. Her pulse was visible underneath her ear; it was fast and unsteady.

Alanna gave Neal a few quiet instructions. Bones went to stand near Thayet. The queen’s eyelids were flickering. Bones glanced around and saw an untouched basket of food. He picked it up and set it forcefully in her lap, passing on his sternest glare. Meekly, Thayet extracted a lump of fine bread and bit a piece off of it. Bones nodded approvingly.

By the bed, Alanna and Neal joined hands. Alanna’s crackling purple Gift rolled down her arms to merge with Neal’s emerald fire. It spread over Kalasin’s infection, picking at it. Thayet shuddered, although she was not watching the healers.

“Can you feel it?” she asked Bones.

“Feel what?”

“The magic,” said Thayet. “It sparks. You can’t?”

“I’m not of this world,” said Bones gently. “My—methods—are different. Undoubtedly I haven’t got any connection with your magic.”

“What are your methods?” Thayet asked, some desperation in her eyes. “What can you do for my daughter?”

“I can try to cure her, if you’d like,” said Bones. “Do you have penicillium mold here? It’s a blue fungus, and it’s very common where I’m from; it can be found in any deciduous forest, and most commonly in rainforest—”

“I think so,” said Thayet hesitantly. “I don’t remember much of my woodcraft—I can ask Buri, but…” Her eyes darted to Kalasin.

“Maybe later,” said Bones carefully.

Try as he might, Bones could not feel anything in the air. It was warm and humid, and the smallest of cool breezes blew under the door. But there was none of the crackle that Thayet described. He could see that magic should be filling the room with its fizzling spark, but he could not feel it. 

He didn’t know how long it took until Alanna and Neal both fell back. Thayet rushed to Alanna, and Bones to Neal. Neal collapsed into his arms in what would have been a maidenly manner if he hadn’t weighed as much as a small boulder, so that Bones nearly dropped him.

Kalasin went into convulsions.

Bones had no idea what to do. He was without his medkit, and his tricorder was in his room. He leaned Neal hastily against a wall and ran to Kalasin. She had stopped moving. He checked her pulse, his own heart shuddering. He felt only a faint heartbeat.

Alanna came around quickly, but she could not get up. Thayet called for a guard to carry Alanna back to her room. Neal made it to a chair and had to sit there for a long time until he could stand. Thayet was on the verge of tears.

Bones had forgotten completely about the Enterprise and about his communicator. He took Neal’s shoulder as soon as Neal could support himself and said, “I need to find some mushrooms.”

“What?” said Neal blearily. His cloudy eyes were fixed on Kalasin’s still body. The princess was paler than ever, and the red patch across her chest was a blinding scarlet, now.

“I need to find some mushrooms. It’s a cure we used—it’s called penicillin, and it’s—it’s—” Bones struggled to remember his medical history. Penicillin was obsolete, now, and its pharmaceutical derivatives were manufactured, not found in the wild. “—I think it’s blue? It’s mold, it’s very small—it can be found on rotting organic material—” Neal looked rather blank. “Dead trees?”

“Yes, of course,” Neal snapped, suddenly himself. “I know what rotting organic material is, Sir McCoy.” He stood up, his knees trembling. “This fungus will cure Kalasin?”

“Theoretically,” said Bones, trying to take Neal’s arm to steady him. Neal pushed him off. “I have to derive the penicillin first, but—are you sure you’re okay?”

“I am feeling quite well,” said Neal, and took an entire step forwards. He only wobbled a bit. Every particle of Bones was a doctor and each of those particles was screeching at him to make Neal go lay the fuck down and take some Advil and submit to a bioscan, but those particles were also wailing about Kalasin’s condition and demanding a cure for her. Bones ground his teeth at the catch-22, told Neal that if he so much as stumbled that Bones was taking him back to the palace if he had to drag him, and informed Thayet that they were leaving to find the cure.

“Cure,” said Neal, trying not to stagger as he strapped a knife to his leg, “is a word with a very strong connotation.”

“Cure,” Bones repeated firmly, grabbing a few leather pouches and wishing they had sample jars on this goddamn primitive planet. They were in a supply room near the stables. “It’s the right word. This stuff is potent. It caused a revolution in my world.”

“Hm,” said Neal, obviously not looking at Bones as he tied up the laces on his boots. “Do you think that it is a good idea to introduce it to our world?”

“Yes,” said Bones firmly. “Because you’re never goin’ to be able to make it. I’ll derive it in a way you can’t duplicate. Anyway, Kalasin’s infection is unique, from what I can tell. You probably won’t need the stuff again. So, I’m tellin’ myself I’m doin’ nothin’ wrong here.” Even though I am, he thought to himself. But he shook it away. The Prime Directive had its purposes, but this—the preventable death of a paitent—was not one of them.

“As you say,” said Neal seriously. “Now—a blue fungus? That grows on rotting foliage? We have something like that. We call it hadelbloom. It is easily found in deep woods.”

In the stables, Bones helped Neal onto Brightstar and clambered onto his own horse, a steady mare called Honey. Neal led them not through Corus, the way they had come originally, but out behind the palace, and over a few scrubby hills until they reached a great expanse of dense forest that curved to the east around the Olorun Valley, where Corus was situated, and was probably part of the same forest Neal had found him in. 

Bones and Neal only searched for ten minutes before Neal found an ancient cedar log bent over a rock, near a flickering stream, its underside covered in fuzzy moss. Bones filled ten leather bags with it, and on their way back to the palace, they saw four more trees under siege by the same moss. Bones took samples of it from every tree, explaining to Neal that there were various species of penicillium. Neal thought the process of making the cure was deliciously simple and asked Bones quite a few times what he was going to do to derive the penicillin.

“Turning penicillium mold into penicillin is… difficult,” said Bones, understating hugely. “This next step could take some time.”

Back at the palace, Neal was perkier. He swept Bones into an abandoned room, bullied a small army of chambermaids and servingmen into bringing Bones every single thing he requested, and skillfully deflected absolutely everybody’s requests to see Bones—even the king and queen’s. Bones explained that the help he needed was quite small, but Neal insisted he’d be happy to do anything, no matter how trivial, that Bones required.

“Then hold this still for five minutes,” said Bones, pushing a little pane of glass into Neal’s hand and dumping five ground-up grams of the bright blue penicillium onto it. “Don’t move a muscle.”

Neal didn’t.

They worked for eight hours. Bones’s method, which he had invented on his way to and from the forest to utilize the scant available technology, was to take apart his medical tricorder and heat up the metallic components within it in order to cause a reaction within the refined penicillium. Bones would be taking those components with him when he left, or destroying them in the instance that he never did. It was one thing to tell a people about an unattainable technology and entirely another to leave them with the tools to make it.

At the eight hour mark Neal left to check on Kalasin. 

While Neal was gone, Bones took a moment to rest. He sat down, his legs aching from standing for so long. Neal was being incredibly helpful and surprisingly non-snarky. Bones realized that the few sarcastic comments Neal had made were meant to help the mood. Bones was impressed despite himself. 

In the midst of his reverie, Bones heard a faint beep-beep, beep-beep.

For a moment he had no idea what the noise could be. He stared blankly around the room, but there were no flashing lights or intercom panels on the stone walls. Then he tried to trace the sound and realized that it was coming from his belt pouch.

Undoing the ties unconsciously, Bones extracted his communicator.

His heart twisted into a knot as the communicator beeped again. Before he could stop himself, he opened it.

“McCoy here,” he said gruffly.

“Oh, thank th’ Lord,” said Scotty’s exhausted voice.

x

It was fifteen minutes later and Scotty was still apologizing.

“Ah’m so sorry,” Scotty kept saying.

“I know,” Bones explained, “but please don’t beam me up right now—”

“Ah just didnae think th’ primary energizin’ coils would blow afore we stopped at Beta Delta, but—”

“Scotty,” Bones said imperatively.

“Sorry! Let me jus’ get a lock on yer position and ah’ll beam you up—”

“Scotty! You have not been listenin’ to me! Do not beam me up! I’m in the middle of—” Bones paused, unsure of how much he should say: it was entirely possible he could be charged with breaking the Prime Directive. “—a very delicate operation. Just… keep track of my signal, and for Christ’s sake, don’t lose it!”

“What are you workin’ on?” said Scotty curiously. “Anythin’ ah can help with?”

“Not right now,” said Bones. “McCoy out.”

x

“Any progress?” said Neal, sticking his head into the room in a few moments after Bones had hung up on Scotty.

Bones looked up. Neal’s eyes were wider than they usually were. Suspicious. Bones frowned at him. “What’d you do?”

“Excuse me?” said Neal in a voice that fooled nobody.

“What did you do?”

“The princess’s condition is unchanged,” said Neal blithely, slipping into the makeshift lab and picking up a ceramic plate of diluted penicillium. “Do you require any assistance?”

“Neal,” said Bones dangerously.

“I listened at the door,” said Neal finally, staring at the plate. “Thank you for not leaving.”

“Oh,” said Bones, relieved. “That’s it? Good. I thought you’d accidentally—I don’t know, gotten somebody angry at you.”

“I haven’t done that since at least yesterday,” said Neal innocently.

“Of course. Grab that spoon and scoop out some sulfide. I’m going to need to make a few exact measurements…”

x

Neal could convince the Tortallan royalty and nobility not to interfere while Bones was working, but once he was finished, it seemed like everybody in the palace wanted to see Bones’s magical compound.

“It’s not magical, that’s the point,” Bones kept saying, but evidently all cures were magical in Tortall, so nobody really believed him. They just assumed that he had used a different sort of magic.

“It is a different sort of magic, really,” said Neal thoughtfully, having extracted Bones from the curious crowd outside of Kalasin’s chambers. “And magic is our version of your technology.”

“Not the time for metaphors,” said Bones, glaring at the collection of very small vials of powder he held in his palm. “Didn’t Jon and Thayet want to see this?”

“They’re already inside,” said Neal, gesturing Bones towards Kalasin’s room.

Kalasin did look the same. Jon and Thayet both looked more tired than they had appeared before. As Bones prepared the penicillin, he heard Thayet say to Neal that Jon had tried to use some of his own magic on Kalasin, but it had backfired and he was only alive because Numair had been there. Bones had no idea what caused Kalasin’s relatively simple bacterial infection to be so immune to magic, and he could only hope that medicine could work where magic could not.

Bones coated pieces of dough in the penicillin and fed them to Kalasin. She swallowed the bread automatically, all ten rolls of it, until none was left, and Bones’s plate was empty. The procedure was so simple that it was barely a procedure, and everybody looked surprised that it had taken such a short amount of time and effort.

Jon, Thayet, and Neal moved slowly forwards, staring at Kalasin. “She does not seem to be improving,” said Thayet cautiously.

“It’ll take some time,” said Bones. “By tomorrow, the rash should be smaller and her skin’ll be less inflamed.” He looked at Neal, who was watching him with concern. “I really need to lie down, your majesties.”

“Of course,” said Jon, not looking away from his daughter. “Thank you, Sir McCoy.”

x

Bones slept like the dead and was awoken by a shrill beeping ten hours later.

“Ah hate t’ bother you,” said Scotty apologetically. “But there’s a bit of an emergency up here in that we can’t find Uhura or Spock, and the captain wants you back.”

“You can’t find Uhura or Spock?” Bones repeated.

Scotty muttered something else about the primary energizing coils and said, “Ah’m about t’ energize—”

“Wait!” said Bones. “Let me go check on my patient, okay?”

“Well, hurry,” said Scotty anxiously.

Bones tumbled out of bed and saw that somebody had draped his cleaned Starfleet uniform over his clothes rack. Amazed by this miracle of timing, he tugged it on, then went to see about Kalasin.

He met Neal halfway there. Much of his color was back. He grinned hugely at Bones, his eyes sparkling. “Kalasin is much better,” he said, his voice rich. “Their majesties are quite relieved.”

“She is?” said Bones weakly. “Oh, thank God. Can I see her?”

“Of course,” said Neal. Bones followed him back down the hall. “Breakfast afterwards?”

“Actually,” said Bones slowly, “I need to get back to my ship.”

“Oh,” said Neal, his face falling. “I forgot. Of course you should return. I—I will go fetch Sir Alanna, so that she can say her farewells.” 

He turned on his heel and walked away, his shoulders hunched. Bones was reminded strongly that Neal was very young, barely twenty. Bones had made friends and then had to leave them on any number of planets, so he was used to having and then losing this type of brief yet intense friendship. Neal had never known someone so well for such a short amount of time and then had to watch them leave.

But the knowledge didn’t stop him from feeling hollow.

Jon and Thayet were in Kalasin’s room. Thayet was asleep on a long couch tucked into a corner, and Jon, perched on an uncomfortable chair, was smiling at his sleeping daughter. Kalasin was merely warm to the touch, and the inflamed, scarlet patches on her chest were much smaller and cooler than they had been yesterday.

Bones produced the little pouch filled with penicillin and handed it to Jon, who took it curiously. “Cover ten balls of dough in this, and feed them to her once a day,” he said to the king. “When you run out, don’t worry. She’ll recover really quickly. She’s never been exposed to this medicine before and so the bacterium within her has no resistance to it. She’ll recover fully in a week, if not much less time.”

“I cannot thank you enough,” said Jon, standing. There was something very large and real in his eyes that Bones could barely see the edge of, it was so vast.

“I have a daughter of my own,” said Bones, trying to offer his feelings, and he felt all of the anxiety of the past few days rushing out of him. He would see Joanna again. He would see the ship again, and his shipmates, and Earth herself. “Your majesty, you should know that I am leaving soon. My ship contacted me, and they need me back.”

Jon’s solemn face broke into a smile. “Good! I am glad they have found you. Do you require anything? We owe you our lives.”

“You owe me nothing,” said Bones. “I was just doing my job.”

x

Neal didn’t show up to say goodbye.

Everyone else he had dealt with in Tortall was there. He talked with them for as long as he could, but there was no creak of a door, or pattering footsteps. Neal wasn’t coming.

“I should go,” he said softly to Alanna, who nodded. 

“Goddess bless,” she said, squeezing Bones’s hand. He smiled at her and pulled out his communicator.

“McCoy to Enterprise. One to beam up.”

“Energizin’,” said Scotty. “This could take a sec…”

Bones felt the yellow motes of the transporter swirl around him, dipping between his atoms. He watched, knowing what was about to happen. And indeed, it did: through the growing golden haze he saw a new figure amongst the crowd—a tall, black-haired boy with clever eyes and a desperate expression. Bones raised his hand gently, trying not to disturb the beam, and waved at Neal, whose lips curved quickly into a smile. Neal waved back, and mouthed, “Thank you.” 

Bones grinned and was gone.


End file.
